android - what is view hierarchy? - android

I'm studying android, of course I'm novice, I always read something like view hierarchy, so what exactly does this mean? what is view hierarchy? e.g.
// fragment's containing frame doesn't exist. The fragment
// may still be created from its saved state, but there is
// no reason to try to create its view hierarchy because it
// won't be displayed. Note this is not needed -- we could
// just run the code below, where we would create and return
// the view hierarchy; it would just never be used.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Fragment.html

A View inside another View creates an hierarchy, the outer view becomes the parent of the inner view and the inner view is its child. It's just nested views.
Here's an example:

You'll want to read the docs on the View class, but essentially views can be children of certain other views. You can nest views in complicated ways. This whole structure of views is referred to as the view hierarchy.

http://i.stack.imgur.com/gN6AO.png
Each view in a user interface represents a rectangular area of the display. A view is responsible for what is drawn in that rectangle and for responding to events that occur within that part of the screen (such as a touch event).
A user interface screen is comprised of a view hierarchy with a root view positioned at the top of the tree and child views positioned on branches below. The child of a container view appears on top of its parent view and is constrained to appear within the bounds of the parent view’s display area.
you can refer to this link : [
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Understanding_Android_Views,_View_Groups_and_Layouts_in_Android_Studio][1]

Related

Fragment Transactions with scrollview

You have an Activity A --> display a fragment B (scrollView), on next button you have fragment C replaced with relative Layout. But the view is not replaced.
ScrollView Defines as follows :
"A view group that allows the view hierarchy placed within it to be scrolled. Scroll view may have only one direct child placed within it. To add multiple views within the scroll view, make the direct child you add a view group, for example LinearLayout, and place additional views within that LinearLayout."
-ScrollView is not a base view hence wrapping the scrolling in base views like (Linear Layout,RelativeLayout Can solve your problem

How to determine all views which are overlapping with given view?

I have to determine all views (rectangles) which are overlapping given view. (Idea is to get visible area of givenView)
public List<Rect> getOverlappingViewsForGivenView(View givenView)
{
//return overlapping rectangles
}
I can use getGlobalVisibleRect to get Visible area but it considers overlaps only by parent elements. I tried above getGlobalVisibleRect eg. View covered by it's parent ScrollView.
First, you can get with getX()and getY() the position of your view on screen. If it is in a scroll view You might want to check if it is "on screen" and such.
With the given bounds you would get the root view (e.g. calling getParent()), and iterate over the children with getChildCount()and getChildAt(int).
That's the general Idea. Depending on your layout hierarchy this can get very easy or very tricky.

What happens to child views when parent is dismissed in Android

I have a custom view in android which is also a container for other views. The child views have certain onClickListeners attached to them. My question is when the parent view is dismissed, does the associated child views and their corresponding listeners also cleaned up or do we need to handle it separately?
Basically any View can be considered as ViewGroup hierarchy with child elements in it. If by "dismissed" your custom View is removed through the call of ViewGroup#removeView (or any similar removal methods) then all its children are removed too.

What happens behind the scenes when an xml is "inflated"?

For example When we write the code
View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.main_activity, null);
What does the Android system do?
Check out the source for the LayoutInflater. It's an abstract class, a concrete instance of which is obtained through getLayoutInflater().
In essence, the inflater creates a root view object (the root view group of the inflated XML), then does two passes through the XML tree to attach each child view. This is done recursively to handle 'include' and to fix up references between child views, for example in RelativeLayout, and is done top to bottom.
The first pass constructs the tree by instantiating each of the child views, top down recursively, and passes the XML attributes to the view constructor telling the view how big it should be. It then calls measure() for each child passing in restrictions determined by the parent (e.g. RelativeLayout with 2 child views each requesting match_parent) using a measure specifications object and asks the view how big it wants to be. If the view is itself a view group, it will use the same algorithm to measure it's children.
The second pass is the layout pass when layout() is called on each child to position itself within the view. The parent positions the view using the measurements calculated in the measure pass. onDraw() is called and is passed a Canvas created from the DecorView backing bitmap.
The finalised tree is then ready to pass to the window manager which is done by setContentView() or addContentView().
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/4.1.1_r1/android/view/LayoutInflater.java#LayoutInflater
Inflating an XML layout in simple language means you are converting the XML in View. Then you can fetch each view declared in the XML using the parent/inflated View.
For eg -
View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.main_activity, null);
Now, here view is the reference of the XML from which you can fetch all the views as,
TextView tv = (TextView)view.findViewById(R.id.tv);

Parent view draw child view efficient

For example, top level LinearLayout view has 300 child view. But device screen dimension only show 11 child view once. How android compute how many child views can show once? How a view know that it will be draw?
Edited
In my work, one case like this:
An parent LinearLayout view may be has hundreds child view. In order to better performance , my solution like this:like lazy load.
List list = new ArrayList();//contain entity object that use construct View object
Default load 5 child view.
Parent LinearLayout view last child view is custom Loading View, I have override it`s onDraw() method. If loading View is draw, that means i need get next 5 child view(get next 5 object from list,and create correspond view).
I want to know how android framework handle this case?
Have u used scroll bar inside the top level LinearLayout view and add child view on that layout that's simple...
An parent LinearLayout view may be has hundreds child view. In order
to better performance , my solution like this:like lazy load.
LinearLayout with(possible) hundreds of child views kind of contradicts better performance. I think what you're looking for is a ListView with an endless adapter(a simple google search will show how to implement it, not something that difficult). This adapter will start loading views(with a loading view showing while the new content loads) as soon as you get to the last loaded element.
If you still want to use a LinearLayout:
If you just want to make the LinearLayout fill the content of the screen when it's first laid out you could post a Runnable on one of your views in the onCreate method (if this is where you'll first populate the LinearLayout). In that Runnable find the height of the LinearLayout and compare it with the combined height of its currently present children. If the combined child height is smaller then the LinearLayout height then add more views to compensate.
If the LinearLayout is in a ScrollView and you want to add additional children when the loading view becomes visible then monitor the scrolling of the ScrollView and when the loading view becomes visible add new children. Seeing when the loading view becomes visible would be done by checking how much the user has scrolled compared with the combined height of the currently present children of the LinearLayout.
Initial response:
Your question is a bit ambiguous regarding what you want to know. If you have a specific problem you should start with that.
For example, top level LinearLayout view has 300 child view. But
device screen dimension only show 11 child view once.
Please don't get yourself in a scenario like this. That number of views is to big an will result in poor performance or even the app crashing if you run out of memory(as all those views will be kept in memory).
How android compute how many child views can show once?
Each View and ViewGroup has the onMeasure method to measure itself and its children if available. The LinearLayout will have its onMeasure method called and in this method it will measure its children(with the measure method) giving them some suggestions on how big should they be(the LinearLayout receives some suggestions on how big it should be from its parent). If you want to see how this is done have a look at the source code of the LinearLayout.
How a view know that it will be draw?
I don't understand what you want to know. To draw the view on the screen its onDraw method will be called.

Categories

Resources